Circular RNAs are depleted of polymorphisms at microRNA binding sites

• DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btu257
• Publication Date: 2014-04-25T01:19:45Z
• Authors: Laurent F. Thomas; Pål Sætrom
• Keywords: DNA binding site

Motivation: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are an abundant class of highly stable that can affect gene regulation by binding and preventing microRNAs (miRNAs) from regulating their messenger RNA (mRNA) targets. Mammals have thousands circRNAs with predicted miRNA sites, but only two been verified as being actual sponges. As it is unclear whether these sites functional, we investigated seed within human under selective pressure. Results: Using SNP data the 1000 Genomes Project, found a significant decrease in density at compared flanking sequences random sites. This was similar to 3' untranslated regions, suggesting many functional pressure mRNAs. Contact: [e-mail] Supplementary information: Data available Bioinformatics online.